NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab has introduced a second spherical of layoffs for 2024, this time shedding 325 individuals – about 5% of its workforce. The announcement was made on Nov. 12 in a memo despatched to staff, which notes the layoffs might have been even bigger. The final reduce was made this previous February, when 530 staff had been let go. A part of the problems which pressured the layoffs comes from the the doable cancelation of the Mars Pattern Return mission. With the October 2024 launch of Europa Clipper, JPL doesn’t have a flagship mission within the pipeline proper now.
As with the layoffs in February, the cuts don’t have anything to do with the person efficiency; it’s all budget-related and an try and stability the books. NASA Headquarters handed on funding constraints within the present finances to JPL, and whereas JPL has tried to handle them, the outcomes are the 2 rounds of inauspicious layoffs.
“It is a message I had hoped to not have to write down,” JPL Director Laurie Leshin mentioned within the memo despatched to all workers members. “Regardless of this being extremely tough for our neighborhood, this quantity [of layoffs] is decrease than projected just a few months in the past thanks partially to the laborious work of so many individuals throughout JPL.”
Leshin mentioned the lab’s management has needed to cope with “continued funding challenges” and an unsure future as NASA has been juggling and reconsidering its priorities for deep house exploration. She famous that the discount was unfold throughout almost all areas of JPL, together with technical, undertaking, enterprise, and help areas to fulfill the out there funding for Fiscal 12 months 2025. Leshin mentioned that the end result of the presidential election final week didn’t have any bearing on the layoffs.
“We’ve taken critically the necessity to re-size our workforce, whether or not direct-funded (undertaking) or funded on overhead (burden). With decrease budgets and based mostly on the forecasted work forward, we needed to tighten our belts throughout the board, and you will notice that mirrored within the layoff impacts,” Leshin wrote.
All staff had been informed to make money working from home as we speak (Nov. 13) and everybody would obtain an e mail whether or not their place was being eradicated or not. Leshin mentioned JPL would supply “personalised help to our laid-off colleagues who’re a part of the workforce discount, together with providing devoted time to debate their advantages, and several other different types of help.”
This second spherical of layoffs weren’t a shock. Throughout a current city corridor with staff, Leshin mentioned the continued funding challenges and projections of what the potential influence on the JPL workforce might appear to be. She indicated her staff had been working by way of a number of workforce eventualities to handle the modifications in funding, with the purpose of minimizing opposed results on JPL’s capabilities and staff. However regardless of their efforts, the conclusion was that this extra workforce discount was inevitable.
After the layoffs as we speak, JPL will likely be left with about 5,500 common staff.
“These are painful however mandatory changes that may allow us to stick to our finances whereas persevering with our vital work for NASA and our nation,” JPL mentioned in an announcement.
On social media, JPL staff referred to as the information “devastating,” and “terrible.” One other mentioned, “Can’t think about the stress it will produce.”
However Leshin additionally mentioned she believed this is able to be the final workforce discount wanted for the foreseeable future and that staffing ranges at this level are actually “steady and supportable.”
“Whereas we will by no means be one hundred pc sure of the longer term finances, we will likely be nicely positioned for the work forward,” Leshin wrote. “This may occasionally not assist a lot on this tough second, however I do wish to be crystal clear with my ideas and perspective. If we maintain sturdy collectively, we’ll come by way of this, simply as we’ve finished throughout different turbulent occasions in JPL’s almost 90-year historical past.”
Dare Mighty Issues
JPL has a protracted and storied historical past — “Dare Mighty Issues” is the Lab’s motto — with the Lab’s origins relationship again to the Nineteen Thirties, when Caltech professor Theodore von Kármán oversaw pioneering work in rocket propulsion. Within the Nineteen Sixties, JPL started to develop robotic spacecraft to discover different worlds, starting with the Ranger and Surveyor missions to the Moon, rapidly adopted by Mariner missions to Mercury, Venus and Mars. Now, missions and devices constructed or managed by JPL have visited each planet in our Photo voltaic System in addition to learning the Solar. The long-lasting Voyager missions have now entered interstellar house.
Regardless of the tough layoffs, Leshin was eager for what’s to return for JPL.
“We’re an extremely sturdy group—our dazzling historical past, present achievements, and relentless dedication to exploration and discovery place us nicely for the longer term,” she wrote.
